The University of Sheffield
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering

Veronica Mirambo - Research Student

Veronica Shittah-Mirambo

Telephone: 25767
Room: D105

email : V.Shittah-Mirambo@sheffield.ac.uk

Research Group

Research Project

Modelling the long-term water quality performance of (selected) Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS)

Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) are increasingly used to improve the urban runoff water quality before being discharged to receiving water bodies and to reduce flooding risks and attenuating runoff flows. Whilst urban runoff pollution potential to receiving waters is on the increase, a thorough understanding of the long-term water quality performance of SUDS in removing pollutants contained in urban runoff is limited. The need to expand on the limited knowledge cannot be over estimated. The objective of my research then, is to model long-term water quality performance of Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS).

The proposed work will involve: water quality monitoring at the inlet and outlet of Manor Park (Sheffield) SUDS treatment train, which consists of a series of three wetland treatment basins receiving urban runoff from a newly constructed Housing Development Catchment so as to establish the observed water quality performance of the train; simulating water quality performance using INFOWORKS and or MUSIC (Model for Urban Stormwater Improvement Conceptualisation) models; and developing a simple water quality performance spreadsheet model. Proposed water quality parameters for the study are: total nitrogen, total phosphorus, total suspended solids, which will be manually sampled once a day for a proposed period of six months; pH and temperature are proposed to be continually monitored using YSI sondes; and runoff flow and rainfall depth. Event based monitoring is also proposed to enable an insight knowledge on the impact of a rainfall event on the urban runoff water quality and the SUDS treatment train performance. Expected results include the observed water quality performance, simulated water quality performance results from the INFOWORKS and or MUSIC model and a spreadsheet model.